The Definite Article

Let’s be honest: debate about the England team will never cease to make the news. There’ll never be anything that doesn’t cause argument, to do with England. There’ll never be nothing to talk about with the England team. Foreigners who live here have an opinion of the press in this country that the English nationals miss for being so engrossed in the cacophony – that England will never win. And that’s not even in footballing terms – England can never win, they say, due to the fact that the press continuously scrutinise them – whether they play well or not so. A three-nil victory? It was against a ‘pub side’. A 0-0 draw with one of the top dogs? ‘They’re never getting anywhere’. Sit back and analyse how we treat our national side and you’ll get an image of what everyone else can see: that we need to give them a break. Friday’s 0-0 draw against Germany didn’t actually draw as many negatives from the newspapers the next day as it might usually. People were more focused ...

They’ve just won the World Cup and are being hailed as the future of English football. But who are England’s U17s? For most of us, the glittering star in the sky that was the dream of playing professional football as a career remained frankly that: a dream. We all imagined it at some point: walking out of the tunnel to thousands of adoring fans, name printed on the back of your shirt, amongst players who were once your biggest idols. Most of us probably dreamt bigger, too. Like signing for Barcelona… or scoring a goal in a World Cup final. For the lucky few, it became a reality. Alright, so it isn’t the main event, but the under-17 World Cup that just took place in India was the big break for the tiny number of English players who made the big time. Hundreds of thousands of young players had images of being in their position when they were young – and just twenty one of them were chosen for the squad to travel to Asia for the competition – just the 4 th tim...